


Holding on to Everything

by sugarboat



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bill's mystery hole, Established Relationship, M/M, Other, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Canon, Triangle Bill Cipher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 23:32:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8943805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: A lifetime has passed since Ford accepted Bill's deal and gave up his dimension, but some things just never change.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another standalone that could be loosely seen as following [these](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7953520/chapters/18188986) [two](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8320693). Basically one of those Bill won, Ford's a demon/ascended/your cliched entity of choice, ~~and now they're in a shit relationship for all time~~ , type of things. :)

It wouldn’t be until later that Ford would recognize the warning signs for what they were.

In the moment, the only realization he had was that Bill hadn’t been around for a while. As soon as the thought occurred he paused in his writing, lifted his head and glanced over to the calendar nearby. He didn’t really need it, but its presence was comforting, a relic from his past. It had been weeks since Bill had last come by. Unheard of for the surprisingly clingy entity, unless they had been fighting. Ford frowned. Had they fought last time they’d seen each other? He didn’t think so.

Ford mulled it over for another few moments and then shrugged. If Bill was distracting himself with something else, that was all well and good – it kept him out of Ford’s hair for once. He went back to writing, determined to finish his latest journal and add it to the growing collection. The light in his study buzzed lowly, and was the only sound in the solitary room aside from the measured scratching of his pen across paper, or the quiet whispering of a page turning over. 

He didn’t seek out Bill until it had been _months_ since the annoying triangle had last popped in.

Bill Cipher wasn’t difficult to find; not anymore, at least. The sigil carved into Ford’s back, into his very being, pulsated constantly to a foreign heartbeat (a disruption that had become a comfort, and now Ford couldn't imagine falling asleep without the dull, lulling throb between his shoulderblades), pulled taut like a string between them. With limbs that didn’t exist in any physical space, Ford dipped claws into the thin fabric that separated dimensions and tore, taking a step through and ending up-

In the middle of a party. A worldwide rager, from the looks of it. He had to stop from rolling his eyes. It was one of those dimensions that embraced magic and Ford had to admit, they did tend to throw the best parties. This was one was centered around the confines of a great city, and its native denizens staggered up and down its streets, hollering and dancing, or fighting, or throwing up, or just straight up passing out in a pile of mishmashed limbs. Deafening music rang out with no discernable origin, making his bones tremble in his frame.

It looked like someone had turned their moon into a giant disco ball.

Ford shoved his way through the tangled throng, towards the raised dais in the middle of the town square. There upon it was a great golden throne, with what remained the most obnoxious being he’d ever encountered perched in its seat. Off of one of the delicate and sloping balconies of the state building behind Bill, dozens of creatures were strung up, bound and gagged and with strange colored fluids dripping out of holes punched in their carapaces. 

The triangle in question was cracking up – drunk off his bottom plane, Ford could tell from here. Bill’s eye, no, eyes were focused on a pair of creatures scuffling in a cleared out area before his throne.

“Jennifer, you’re FIGHTING for your LIFE here! How about a little more CONVICTION, huh?” Bill called out between giggles. 

The thing – Jennifer, Ford supposed – chattered back in its click clacking language. She appeared to be lobbing a few choice insults at the demon, revolving around his deficit of limbs and lack of an appropriately firm exoskeleton. _Far too culturally specific to be effective._ Proving his point, Bill only laughed in response. A martini glass popped into existence in Bill’s hand and he tossed it back, though he forgot to switch to his mouth and ended up splashing the bright liquid all over his eye. 

“Whoops.”

“Bill!” Ford shouted, and even now, it was unnerving to be the center-point of Bill’s attention. The triangle turned towards him, main eye curved in a dripping grin, and the pupils of the multitude floating in the air all snapped to him in unison.

“FORDSY!” Bill’s arm stretched and stretched and stretched, and wrapped around his waist, and then he was lifted up over the crowd and dragged to his former muse’s side. The throne shifted so there was room for the two of them and Bill’s free hand was shoving a drink into Ford’s. “When did YOU get here IQ? I THOUGHT I said no NERDS!” 

“Is that why you didn’t invite me?” Ford tried, and failed, to not take it personally. Bill rolled his eye while his arm slowly unwound from the man, until there was just a relatively normal length one tucked around him, holding Ford flush to his warm and glowing surface.

“NOBODY gets INVITED, Sixer,” Bill said. “And you always get so GRUMPY at these I figured I’d let you, you know, DO YOUR OWN THING for once!” Ford drained his drink and carefully set the empty glass on the arm of the throne, before turning further to face Bill. Thin black fingers stroked through his hair, claws scratching over his scalp. It sent a rolling rush down his spine like a chill. “SO!” Bill’s hand stilled at the base of his neck, tugging lightly, insistently at the short strands there to get Ford to lean his head back. “Gonna SHOW ME what you’ve been UP TO?” 

He didn’t wait for permission – Bill never did - and the strange sensation came, of the demon rifling through his mind. It brought back old – very old – memories, and no matter how many times it had occurred, it remained an intimate act. A flush crept to Ford’s face, either from the booze or from, well, Bill. The sigil on his back grew hot. And, surprisingly, when he pushed vaguely at Bill’s mind with his own, the near-deity relented, giving Ford a taste of what he’d been getting into. 

Information pouring itself into his brain was both noxious and exhilarating, made Ford feel sea sick and light headed. A cascade of impressions – energy at his fingertips, drinks on his tongue, the echoes of a million conversations chiming lightly in his ears – but there was one strand he searched for in the rush: the tide of Bill’s own thoughts, the breakneck clockwork snap of his intellect, the vast breadth of knowledge that escalated and encapsulated without end. A hundred million eyes opening and splintering into more, a dark and steady thrumming tying them together. 

It ended as abruptly as it began. Ford could still feel Bill’s presence, heady in the air around them, but he wasn’t part of it any more, no longer privy to his muse’s internal workings. Every glimpse Bill gave him only opened up another chasm for him to fall into. Ford was practically salivating and Bill was laughing.

“Hey, Fordsy, you’re SPLITTING at the SEAMS; MIGHT wanna PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER!” 

Ford cleared his throat in embarrassment – or would have, had he still had one. He’d gotten so wrapped up in _Bill_ that his form had almost completely dissociated. The man hurriedly coalesced himself, and Bill’s hands were back on him in an instant. A pair tangled in the lapels of his coat and yanked him forward, and a second pair splintered off from those and landed flat on his back, encouraged him closer. There wasn’t much more he could do than obey, and Ford touched his own hands to Bill’s surface.

His fingers drifted across the glimmering gold. Bill hummed quietly in response, Ford watching as the demon’s natural glow smoldered. A ripping sound, tearing cloth, and then Bill’s hands were running over his skin, claws scraping against him every now and again as they explored the lay of his body. As if Bill hadn’t seen it, felt it, tasted it a million times over. Loud cheers suddenly rang out and Ford’s whole body jerked – he’d completely forgotten that they were in the middle of Bill’s celebrations.

Twisting around, Ford saw that the fight had ended, bits and pieces of ‘Jennifer’ scattered about the ground. He grimaced. The extra eyes Bill had opened – probably to get a better view of the festivities – were still there, still suspended in the air and glowing with ruinous light. From various angles they watched, their pitch black slit-like pupils focused unerringly on Ford. Only on Ford. It sent a wave of heat crashing through him that settled in his stomach and he turned to face his muse.

One of the hands on his back was tracing up and down his spine, while its opposite was following the silky smooth outline of the triangular sigil Bill had carved between his shoulders a lifetime or two ago. The static discharge that tingled up his fingers grew more pronounced, lances shooting up into his forearms, singing along his bones like the tolling of a deep and resonant bell. Ford grinned and moved his hands around to Bill’s back plane, digging nails in, scratching at the smooth gold.

A tongue dripped out from behind Bill’s eye and twined through the short space between them, lapping at Ford’s chest and neck. The pair of hands that had been shifting aimlessly across Ford’s chest dropped down to curl around his hips and tug him even closer. Another hand sprouted and fisted fingers in his hair. Ford pressed his body against Bill’s surface and mouthed along it, first just brushing his lips over it and then more firmly, and then licking at the flickering heat. Bill crackled and sizzled, bucking sporadic energy against him, and Ford couldn’t help the smirk that warped his mouth. 

There were a multitude of hands swarming over him, now clawing at his flesh, roaming over his arms, squeezing at his thighs, cupping his ass and urging him to thrust his hips harder against the firm surface he was pressed flush to. Impatient fingers wrapped around his chin and tugged him towards Bill’s mouth, and Ford let out a moan that was drowned between them. His cock strained against his breeches and he rutted shamelessly against his muse. 

“Maybe we could,” Ford began. He interrupted himself with a shaky inhale as one of Bill’s hands snuck between them and clever fingers teased up and down his length. “Maybe we could go somewhere more, uh, private?” 

Bill laughed.

“Between the TWO of us, YOU’RE the one with DIMENSION-SHREDDING fingers!” Bill nipped at his neck with sharp teeth. “Which, by the way, would have been pretty CONVENIENT about, oh, I dunno, a billion years ago! Give or TAKE a CENTURY or TWO!” 

Ford didn’t need more invitation than that to stretch his _arms_ out again, reaching behind Bill to tear open a rift that they could fall into. It was mildly disorienting – one moment a crowd was pulsing around them, music beating him deaf, and the next they were falling into silence. It was a dimension that was teetering on the cusp of falling into the Nightmare Realm – one that Bill had invaded and ruined and abandoned years ago.

But Ford had always been fond of its cosmos – countless bright stars that glistened in the night sky, and cast them in pale shadows through the open windows. Bill was beneath him, not floating or hovering for once, just lying against the bedspread they’d dropped onto, black arms sticking out at odd angles and still running over his skin. 

The former human propped himself up on an elbow, and with his free hand ran his fingers along the thin bottom plane of Bill’s form. It was smooth, interrupted at even intervals by the shallow indents between his bricks. Ford was a little too embarrassed to ask for what he was seeking, but Bill seemed to understand, if the mocking laughter was anything to go by. It was probably testament to how drunk – or desperate – Bill himself was feeling that he complied anyway, the surface beneath Ford’s fingers shifting.

“You haven’t been a human in HOW LONG and this is STILL what gets your engine going?” Bill’s extra arms looked almost arachnoid in nature where they came off from his body, long and thin. He busied himself divesting Ford of the tattered remains of his clothing.

“I’m a simple man with simple pleasures,” Ford replied, chuckling when Bill rolled his eye. He hunched over so he could lick the glowing area just below Bill’s eye, which swapped into a mouth the moment he came close. 

“Nothing simple about YOU, Brainiac.” 

The fingers in his hair tightened, their grip turning rough, borderline uncomfortable as Ford deliberately avoided making contact with Bill’s mouth. Ford brought his hand up to pull Bill’s bowtie away and laved at the exposed surface. The demon was beginning to twitch impatiently below him. His tongue came out to slither up the side of Ford’s neck and along his face, wet and hot and smooth as silk, but Ford caught the wiggly appendage in his hand and held it still.

“Ugh, FORD, I didn’t DITCH my PARTY for you to waste my **TIME** ,” Bill said. His tongue began to coil around in lazy loops, first between Ford’s fingers and then up in twists along his wrist. 

“Hmm, that’s funny; I could have sworn you had an infinite amount of it.” Teasing Bill wasn’t always the best idea, but Ford found it difficult to resist. His former muse just huffed, eye coming back out to glare up at him while the tongue in his hand dissipated into dark smoke that billowed heavy in the air and left a thin, shiny film over his skin. 

“Humor’s never really been your STRONG SUIT – I’d STICK to the BOOKS if I were you.” It was hard to take Bill’s grumbling too seriously as his hands continued to be occupied with running over every inch of skin Ford possessed. They applied a slight, steady pressure – subtle encouragement for Ford to close the distance between them.

"I know what I'm going to stick it to." Ford _also_ knew the words were a mistake the moment they left his mouth. Bill froze and the hands that just been pulling at his limbs, stroking over his skin abruptly went limp. Ford coughed uncomfortably.

"Been hanging out in the FRAT BOY dimension, huh? I gotta say, FORDSY, I'm SURPRISED!" One of his dark hands disentangled from Ford, and a baseball cap wove itself into existence in his grasp. He slid it onto Ford's head, adjusting it so the bill pointed backwards. "Doesn't seem like your CUP of TEA! And SPEAKING of DRINKS, I HOPE you didn’t accept any from STRANGERS while you were there!” 

Ford yanked the hat off and propped it on Bill’s top angle.

“Should I be surprised that there _is_ such a dimension?” He paused a moment. “You’ve been there, haven’t you?” 

“What can I SAY? They really know how to PARTY!” The hat went up in flames and left behind no ash. “But don’t take that the WRONG WAY - they got NOTHING on you, STUD!” 

It was Ford’s turn to freeze up, and his face scrunched with something akin to disgust before he was capable of wrangling it into a more neutral expression. Bill burst out into laughter and flicked the tip of his nose.

“What’s THAT face for, huh? I thought we were doing some kind of WORST come-ons thing!” He pinched Ford’s cheek, abruptly looking smug. “Oh, I SEE what’s going on here!”

“And what’s that?” Ford stroked his fingers down one of Bill’s sides, just to see his muse’s rippling shiver in response.

“You’re BACKING OUT cause you KNOW I’m GOING TO WIN! WELL, SMART GUY, I can’t say I BLAME YOU! After ALL, you always HAVE been something of a SORE LOSER! And what with ME BEING INFINITELY KNOWLEDGEABLE AND-”

Ford decided to cheat and slammed two fingers inside the demon, cutting off what he had no doubt would have been a long and self-aggrandizing spiel. The hands all over his body flexed, Bill’s eye briefly going static-y like an old TV set, and Ford would feel bad if not for the fact that the muse was still struggling to drag him closer. And whatever weird tissue and muscle Bill had thrown together for him was clenching beautifully around his fingers. His dick throbbed, even as he wondered if Bill would sit still later for a more thorough examination. 

Soft tendrils, velvet and smooth, wrapped around his fingers, pulling against them as he withdrew and then squirming, quivering when he slid back inside, suckling at the pads of his fingertips. Bill himself was wiggling around, the glare he’d had reserved for Ford slipping away piece by piece as the man worked his fingers in and out.

“This doesn’t mean you WIN, you know,” Bill muttered. One of his hands was flat, palm down, against the sigil on Ford’s back, countless others dragging dull claws over his skin. Another ran through his hair again, gentle, and Ford could believe (of course he could) almost affectionate. When Bill tugged at him this time, Ford compiled. Their lips met, languid and slow, and Ford had the thought that he would take anything Bill deigned to offer him and still want to ask for more.

Bill’s lips twitched beneath his own, his frame jolting, and Ford pulled back. With a blink that ghosted soft lashes over his face Bill’s eye was back, his pupil flashing a vivid pink and shaped like a heart for a split second. Ford grinned, and on the next thrust of his fingers, curled and hooked them to rub against the inner wall he’d only brushed over before. His muse practically keened beneath him, grinding himself on Ford’s fingers. 

“XWOHJ,” Bill sighed, voice breathy for a being that had no use for organs so banal as lungs. “BT HYDL YLOZQ.”

Around his limbs, across his body, Bill’s hands on him turned rough as Ford continued. The claws that had been scratching, teasing began to sharpen and break skin, and he could imagine the creaking sound his bones might make as Bill gripped him tighter and tighter. He moved his fingers faster, rougher, their passage becoming eased with slickness, Bill fluttering and spasming wildly around him, his form beginning to glitch and stutter.

All of it only made Ford more eager to drive inside him, his cock almost painfully hard and leaking. Bill’s tendrils swirled and stroked around his fingers and it was all too simple to picture them around his length instead, milking him dry, and mindless, his hips jerked forward. Bill was flashing constantly in time to his litany of pleas for Ford to continue, to go harder, to go faster, to never stop. They came out garbled in code or clanging in harsh and alien languages, but every word and whimper and sigh was like a punch to the gut, igniting flames that unfurled and flickered inside his body. 

Bill’s limbs trembled minutely like the delicate stirring of branches in wind, a pair of hands clenching and twisting in the crumpled sheets below them. Symbols flashed where his pupil should be and between each blink there were teeth and then tongue and then eye like the demon couldn’t decide which was appropriate in any given moment. His surface was scalding hot. The strange, glitching distortions grew more frequent, and Ford could feel him tightening around him, claws digging in to his skin and then-

Ford stopped. His fingers stilled first, and Ford swallowed as he watched Bill buck himself onto them, hardly even noticing that Ford was no longer the one moving. Ford freed his hand and the pathetic sound Bill made was almost enough to make him reconsider. Almost. Leaning back from the demon, Ford slipped his fingers into his mouth. The slickness coating them was lightly sweet. Bill’s eye snapped open in a glare, his color darkening to a deep, angry red. The taste in his mouth soured, suddenly brackish and caustic and Ford’s fingers left his mouth with a hollow pop. He smiled.

“ **STANFORD PINES** , _IF YOU DON’T FINISH THIS RIGHT NOW_ YOU’LL WISH I’D RIPPED YOUR FAMILY TREE UP BY ITS ROOTS CENTURIES BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN CONCEIVED – SOMETHING I CAN STILL DO, BY THE WAY!”

“I’m planning on continuing,” Ford cut in, even though he was pretty sure Bill couldn’t do anything of the sort. The triangle glared at him, sullen (and pouting, in Ford’s opinion). “You just have to do one thing for me first.”

“Oh YEAH? And what’s THAT, huh BRANIAC?” 

“Admit it,” Ford said, and he must not have chosen his words carefully, or put any thought into them at all for that matter, because tension blanketed the room, rolling in like a thick and suffocating fog, Bill stiff beneath him.

“What EXACLTY am I supposed to be ADMITTING?” Ford could think of a million things, and obviously Bill could too. His breath caught in his throat, words jumbled in his mouth, on the cusp of saying, of _naming_ the acute and wailing _thing_ inside him, that only ached when he applied pressure to it, as he did now. The last vestiges of his human remains, the crumpled up bundle of misguided hopes he kept clutched, close and tight, to his chest. He could say- He could ask-

But he didn’t, of course.

“That I won,” he finished rather lamely, confident teasing lying dead on the floor just a few seconds in time behind them. Bill blinked, eye still and wide, claws tensed and poised above Ford’s skin like he was waiting, just waiting, for an excuse - to rip in. To eviscerate. To rend him to ribbons. And then the demon started laughing.

Ford flushed and grimaced, but Bill’s arms encircled him, hands soothing over him, even while his muse shook with how hard he was laughing. At him. Bill might not know everything, but he knew Ford inside and out, upwards and down – knew everything he said and didn’t say, thought and didn’t think. Felt and didn’t feel.

“Oh man, Fordsy,” Bill said, interrupting himself with another laugh before continuing, “I keep FORGETTING that underneath that CRUNCHY, NERDY exterior of yours is the same SOFT goop that’s ALWAYS been there.” A claw tapped on his forehead, just between his eyes. “Want me to TAKE CARE OF THAT for you?” An image in his mind then, of Bill’s matte black claw and finger sliding through his skull, scrambling his frontal lobe. Bill didn’t follow through, but swiped a thumb over the shallow indent the tip of his claw had made, catching the droplet of blood that welled up. 

“Bill…”

“Okay, okay, you didn’t win FAIRLY but I guess you WON all the same – and I kinda like it BETTER when you don’t play by the RULES anyway!” 

Bill curled a finger around one lock of Ford’s hair before tugging it lightly, hard enough to make his scalp tingle but not much more. Following his muse’s lead, Ford tilted his head to the side. His eyes were dark and downcast, lost in thoughts he knew Bill was tracking closely – he could feel the demon dripping, pouring over his mind. Claws scratched at his jawline.

“HEY, so you KILLED the MOOD – not the FIRST time you’ve done it!” Two hands were in his hair, on either side of his head, guiding him to come closer to Bill again. “And it’s DEFINITELY not the LAST time you’ll do it, either! TRUST ME, I KNOW; I’ve SEEN our future!” 

_Our_ future. Ford felt his chest clench tight, annoyed at himself, annoyed at Bill. The same lines worked on him every time. Bill placating him.

“ENOUGH with the NAVEL GAZING, Fordsy – we haven’t even gotten to swap BODILY FLUIDS yet!” 

Bill’s hands were stroking, soft, all over in his body in long, even motions. The loop of one went from end to end of his spine, started with cupping the slope of his neck and sweeping down the bows and arches of his back, pausing before it reversed and ascended. Bill didn’t want to talk about- about _this_. And Ford didn’t either, though he suspected they were each for entirely oppositional reasons. Relenting, yielding, Ford dipped and placed a chaste kiss to Bill’s surface. It had cooled, the gold gone from blazing to lukewarm under his touch. 

“Technically,” Ford replied, lips brushing against Bill with every word. “We already _have_ swapped ‘bodily fluids;’ kissing counts, you know. Particularly when it’s as, ah, _involved_ as the kind we were engaged in.” Clever fingers were brushing over his hip bones and he felt his skin prickle in response.

“Wow, who knew; being a PEDANT was all it took to get you back in the saddle,” Bill said. His eye rolled, to punctuate his deadpanned point. “Not that I’m COMPLAINING, mind you.”

With renewed vigor, Bill’s touch turned teasing once more, rubbing at the junctions of Ford’s hips, the crook of his neck, trailing down, down his chest to the soft thatch of his hair and retreating, always on the verge of giving him _more_ but never fulfilling their promise. Ford licked at Bill’s surface, sloppy and uncoordinated. His body quaked when he felt the disconnected sensation of a mouth at his neck, teeth worrying his skin in short bursts, and another pressing wet and lingering kisses down the bumpy ridges of his vertebrae. 

His hips were soon twitching in the air again, until Bill pulled him hard, flush against each other, and Ford sighed as he rolled his hips against his muse, his dick sliding over Bill’s surface and leaving smudgy streaks of precum across the gold. Hands clenching tight around him again, Bill only encouraged him onwards, eye half lidded, his form buzzing like a plucked cord – the potential energy of a storm still brewing within the riotous depths of the clouds, the taste of barely constrained ozone on Ford’s tongue. 

“Ford, come on, come on.” Each demand peppered with tugs to his hair, with fingers digging into his hips.

On shaking arms, Ford dragged himself away, cursing under his breath and with his hand reached down between them to wrap fingers around his aching length. He pumped himself once in a loose grip and then lined his cock up with Bill. A few tendrils slurped out from inside the demon, dark and dripping, to lap at the head of his cock, and that was it, with a groan Ford sheathed himself fully in his muse.

“Ah, Bill,” Ford managed to breathe out, trying to control himself. Bill was soft and hot all around him, tentacles stroking over his length, wriggling against him. His hips jerked as if he could bury himself deeper. He looked down, heat flooding through him as his gaze rested on the bulging outline his dick made in Bill’s surface and he ran his fingers over the curve, pressing hard against it and feeling almost dizzy at the sensation of touching himself _through_ the demon.

“A-and _I’M_ the narcissist, huh?” Bill was shuddering. 

Ford huffed out a laugh but didn’t otherwise reply. Instead he withdrew, licking his lips, and began to work up to a slow, steady pace. Bill clenched and relaxed rhythmically around him, hands crawling all over his body, phantom mouths sucking hickies across his skin. The demon’s surface had warmed again, glowing minutely brighter as Ford moved, in and out. On his next thrust, Ford angled his hips, and was rewarded with Bill – hands, mouths, body – spasming beneath him. 

His hips worked faster then, harder, slamming over and over into that spot that had Bill absolutely losing it, begging in a thousand languages for Ford to fuck him harder, to do that again, or for just one word, more. Well, maybe Ford was a _bit_ of a narcissist. His muse’s form once more began to glitch, sending a weird sensation, tingling and electric, arcing through his shuddering limbs. Ford could feel himself getting close, knew he couldn’t last much longer. 

Bill grew brighter, keening each time Ford rammed inside him, winding tighter and tighter until all at once his glow started guttering, his claws digging rivulets into Ford’s skin. Ford fucked him through it, whispering mindless words of praise ( _so good, god, Bill-_ ), even as the demon became a stuttering, trembling and overstimulated mass and Ford thrust in deep, muscles clenching and his pelvis flush against the smooth surface of Bill’s plane as he came inside the demon.

He jerked his hips unsteadily inside in his muse a few more times. The tendrils swarming around his cock swirled in an undulating and unsynchronized mass, as though Bill was trying to wring him dry. Finally spent, Ford near-collapsed onto his side, taking care not to flop on top of Bill even if he pinned a few of his muse’s many arms in the process. His heart was hammering in his chest, his breathing ragged, and he ran his fingers endlessly over Bill’s smooth surface. The demon’s normally even glow was fluctuating, brightening and dimming in steady pulses. Steady pulses, Ford realized, that matched the bone-deep thrumming of the symbol on his back. 

They were both quiet for a while. Bill’s extra arms dissolved, sinking into dark shadows, until he was left with just the usual pair. There was still a slight distortion to his front plane, and his pupil flicked over to regard Ford as the man ran one finger along the shallow bump. More eyes ripped open in the air, all regarding him. Ford squirmed, keenly aware of himself, could feel that his face was still flushed, his hair disheveled from Bill’s constant mussing of it, his body damp with sweat and his softening dick still glistening wet. One by one the eyes closed and a dark hand appeared before him, tracing a finger over his lips and then down his chin, his neck, across his collarbones and down the center of his chest, and then blinking out of existence. 

“Not BAD, huh Sixer?” Ford startled out of his stupor, looking back to his muse. Bill had his eye closed and Ford frowned. He didn’t think Bill ever slept. “Yeah, well, you don’t HAVE TO either anymore, but you still do!”

“Don’t answer my thoughts like that,” Ford said, more an automatic response than anything else. Bill chuckled. “And yes, it was _not bad_ , as you put so eloquently.” 

They lapsed back into an almost companionable silence, Bill with his eye closed and Ford on his side, watching him. Without the fervor of lust driving him, Ford was beginning to get cold as a breeze from the starry night outside rolled across his skin. No sooner had he had the thought than a blanket fluttered into existence above him, falling onto him like a feather. Bill reading his thoughts again, but this time he didn’t feel the need to chastise the demon. Instead, he felt rather flattered.

“Just go to SLEEP, Fordsy, I KNOW that fleshy skin suit of yours is getting tired,” Bill said. His hand was back in Ford’s hair, scratching back and forth. “I’ll MEET you there – like OLD TIMES, what do you SAY?” 

Ford sighed, relaxing into the mattress, into the radiating warmth of Bill at his side, into the gentle, mesmerizing scrape of claws over his scalp. He drifted, looking forward to the Mindscape, even as he knew he would inevitably wake alone.


End file.
